Fracking opponents attempt to hijack Delaware River Basin Commission

Activists walk in the parking lot of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to attend a meeting of the DRBC after they held a press conference outside to support the BRBC's fracking ban.
Michael Mancuso/The Times

EWING — A large crowd of environmental activists swarmed into a meeting of the Delaware River Basin Commission here last week and attempted to force the body to halt a pipeline project in northern New Jersey that would move gas from fracking projects in Pennsylvania.

The group claims that as many as 140 anti-fracking protestors jammed the meeting Wednesday, chanted slogans and sang “This land is your land,” forcing the board to hold a lengthy public hearing and interfering with regular meeting activity.

The group hopes to stop construction of the Northeast Upgrade Pipeline Project, an extension of a Tennessee Gas pipeline that would run from Bradford County, Pa., to Bergen County, N.J., near the New York border.

Preparation for the project has begun in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where Tennessee’s contractors have begun removing trees and moving earth prior to installing the pipeline, which the commission approved in July.

“The DRBC has the legal authority to review and approve the pipeline before it would be allowed to enter through or within any portion of the Delaware River watershed,” said Maya van Rossum, who serves as head of the Delaware Riverkeeper environmental group. “We want the DRBC to exercise that jurisdiction,” she said.

But DRBC officials said that the Northeast Upgrade was already reviewed and approved in July: The DRBC used its authority and found no fault with the pipeline, DRBC spokesman Clarke Rupert said.

"The approval found that the project does not conflict with the comprehensive plan, which involved a review of the project relative to all commission regulations,” Rupert said.

The pipelines would transport liquefied natural gas derived from “fracking,” the controversial drilling technique to collect natural gas in which water, mixed with chemicals and sand, is injected underground to fracture shale.

The DRBC has banned fracking in the Delaware River Basin, but has never committed to a permanent ban. In September, activists claimed the commission had held “behind-the-scenes” discussions to consider lifting the ban.

Gov. Chris Christie’s 12-month moratorium on fracking in the state expired on Jan. 17. An Assembly bill to ban the practice was introduced in February.

“There is very much a concern that the pipelines will induce, encourage or support more and more drilling and fracking beyond the watershed boundaries and potentially within the watershed boundaries in the future,” van Rossum said. “But they are also their own separate and distinct issues.”

At the DRBC meeting, van Rossum pleaded for the commission to hold a “people’s meeting” by hearing impassioned speeches from homeowners who don’t want to see the gas pipelines spring up in their backyard and environmental activists who don’t want to see mature forests cut down to make room.

The longest expansion of the pipeline would be a 17-mile span from Pikes County, Pa., into Sussex County, N.J., which van Rossum said would disturb areas of High Point State Park but could also leave homeowners unable to enjoy their property.

“That piece of property is taken away from your free and easy enjoyment because there are limitations on what you can and cannot do there,” van Rossum said. “Now, a pipeline has the right to use that property. You may technically own it but if they have an easement, they get to set the rules.”

The pipelines could also harm surrounding vegetation and wildlife and ruin the natural flow of groundwater, causing runoff and flooding issues, van Rossum said.

Among the three pipelines the Delaware Riverkeeper Network asked the commission to review were the Columbia 1278 Replacement Project and the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company 300 Line.

But with those it’s too little, too late, van Rossum said: Both pipelines have already been installed.

“They could have exercised their jurisdiction before the trees were cut. Now we’re in a position where the Northeast Upgrade Pipeline Project has started but it’s still so early that it’s meaningful for the DRBC to act now, as opposed to one year from now.”